Avaya: Connecting Businesses

Richard Spence, MD

Just about every company, across every vertical in the world, has embarked on their digital transformation journey. Avaya understands better than most vendors that such digital journeys are not specific just to an industry but also to individual companies and their customers. “What if digital transformation could take away the friction between organizations and clients? We are digital business communications specialists, and we bring in the customer experience context at the right time to the right people,” says Richard Spence, Managing Director, Avaya ASEAN.

Avaya, which can trace its origins back over more than 100 years, is today a leading innovator in business communications, providing solutions for employee, partner, and customer engagement. The company focuses on bringing stakeholders closer together, enabling them to make quicker and better business decisions.

Avaya covers the entire business communications gamut, specializing in unified communications and contact center solutions, with its offerings cutting across cloud, network management, and security.

Although the communications market is crowded with companies offering similar solutions and services, Avaya stands out for its focus on business outcomes, expertise in team management, and stakeholder engagement. Spence says that while most players offer contact center services across a range of technologies, providing horizontal breadth, Avaya delivers the much-needed depth in services. Organizations today are looking for deep engagement, and Avaya streamlines information, helping to deliver analytics that provide valuable insights into customer needs.

We are digital business communications specialists and we bring in the customer experience context at the right time to the right people

It works with organizations to create tailor-made offerings as per customers’ needs.

One of Avaya’s success stories is with a large Asia-Pacific bank that wanted a top-notch mobile banking app that would ease customers’ pain points. Avaya created a solution, aptly named, “Banker-in-the-pocket” that senses when a client has failed to complete a transaction due to network outage or whatever reason. If the client chooses to follow up over the phone, the system ensures that they do not have to start the transaction afresh, so a customer who is already a few steps into the process in one mode goes straight through to the next point, avoiding IVR menus. The application enhanced the quality of service, leading to elevated customer satisfaction.

The secret of Avaya’s success lies in its ability to understand clients, their growth path, and strategy. In the ASEAN region, Spence and the management team strive to keep the attitude humble, always willing to learn from customers and partners.

Avaya measures its success by the quality of solutions it delivers and the problems those solutions solve, and not merely by the volume of business executed. Avaya’s Net Promoter Scores corroborate this notion. While a score in excess of 50 is considered commendable, Avaya has achieved a score of 65, having been in the low 20s just a few years ago.

This drive to improve hasn’t gone unrecognized, with Avaya bagging numerous awards for its products and services in the ASEAN region. The latest is the Frost & Sullivan Product Line Strategy Leadership Award in the Enterprise Communications and Endpoints category. Despite all these achievements, Avaya is definitely not resting on its laurels. The company syncs itself with the changes occurring in the market, and within its clients’ environments. Avaya is focused on nimble strategies that allow it to deliver change at a rapid pace. “The future is coming at us at a much faster rate. Speed is crucial. So is change and openness in terms of technology, mindset, and perspective of organizations,” concludes Spence.